Vanishing Valentine
Is she just the one who grabbed my attention at the right time, an infection of infatuation burying itself in my soul through chance? Or am I drawn to her because she's who she is?
Romance comes in all shapes and sizes. Romance drifts in the scent of a rose, it climbs up and down the curves of a lover and resonates in moments of realisation.
Ever since I moved here, I’ve watched the world through my window. It’s my little rectangle of theatre that doesn’t need an orchestra’s accompaniment or a well-versed script to recite. All it requires is an observant onlooker. After a week or two, you notice the regulars. Those people who are ritualistic in their routine, who never divert their plans. Two elderly women strolling past around eight-thirty in the morning, noisy shopping trolleys following their shadows. A small group of middle-aged men. Arriving a minute later, dedicated patrons of the café opposite. They’ll emerge again in an hour, and when it’s warm enough, they’ll stop in the fresh air, sipping and chatting on the stools out front. Around nine, another group wanders down the street. The mummies with kids kicking for freedom from the seat of their prams. Those trusted to walk but stumble, reaching for the hands swinging at eye level. After they’ve vanished, the street goes quiet, and there’s a lull sprinkled lightly with a few peddling bikes.
In the afternoon, the next wave swells into life. First, a few students from the school down the street. Sometimes it’s a couple escaping the peeping peers for a moment of serenity. Other times a whole study group turns up, ready to roleplay adult life for an hour or two. I suppose the students have lunch a fraction earlier than the rest of us; they’re always the first to pass by in the middle of the day. After them, it’s the office workers, their building passes swinging from their necks. They, too, are after some caffeinating and prefer nothing more than an accompaniment of smoke. The last few regulars in the afternoon are those I call the outliers. They’re the ones I’m not sure where they’ve come from, where they’re going or why they’re walking past my little glass rectangle.
Usually, the outliers are the least interesting. They’re a mismatch of backpacks, messy hair, and tired eyes. Some of them are more put together than others and choose clothes that complement each other. Others pay little attention to what they wear. Most of them, if not all, are men. But there’s one woman among them. A woman who, like the rest of the people recorded during my time at the window, is consistent with her routine. Perhaps she’s the most regimented out of the lot, but one thing’s for certain; she’s definitely the most fascinating. There’s a uniformity to her steps, each one falling exactly the right distance from the last. This afternoon she’s wrapped up in her biggest coat, one that descends all the way to her ankles. I’m not sure it’s cold enough for it. I’ve never seen her hands, and today’s no different. They’re nestled comfortably in her pockets. Thinking about what’s inside rolling between her fingers loosens my concentration, and she steps beyond my frame and out of sight. For a few seconds, I try to remember her details; the pinned chocolate hair and pearl white shoes poking out from under her coat. Did she have a backpack, or did I imagine it? Were there headphones in her ears, or was she listening to the city go about its day?
The next day I took my seat again, but I was a little later and I heard the old ladies walk past without seeing them. They’d never been late in their lives. I watched as the middle-aged men came, as usual, laughing about something hilarious as people do when they have little work to do. The kids arrived before the mummies, but only a fraction earlier. Their mothers’ voices chased after them. “Come back! Stop!” I watch on as each runaway has their laughter turned to tears.
Once the afternoon comes along, I’ve already spent an hour wondering when the woman will arrive. I wonder if my observations are correct. I wonder if she is actually the most regimented or if I’ve just awarded her that title through some kind of distant affinity. First to arrive into view is a pair of outliers. They aren’t walking together, instead one hangs a few metres behind the other. One after the other, they take a right and open the door to the café. Neither has tried with their appearance. Right on time, she’s here. Both hands, tucked deep in the pockets of her long coat, and white shoes flash beneath it with each measured step. She’s pulled her hair back tight as usual, but today it falls down her back in a ponytail. Again, my mind is wandering. Today it falls on her fragrance. There’s so much I can tell from behind my little rectangle, but her perfume isn’t among them. Roses and something citrusy, I tell myself, and then she’s gone again.
A couple of days pass the same way, and each time she walks past from one side of my frame to the other, my picture becomes a little clearer. She’s reluctant to wear makeup; only once were her lips painted a subtle red, and her eyebrows shaded a tone darker. It was a day when she adopted black leather shoes over her pearl white trainers. And she had a backpack, a small black one, which struggled to stand out from her long coat and chocolate hair. There’s also something else, a reckless idea with no outline or colour. It’s more of a feeling, one that whispers in my ears every time she walks by. She knows I’m watching on from my little rectangle.
Now, I’m hoping for a sight of her; the afternoons drag their heels in the mid-morning sun. I wonder if she could have been anyone. Was she just the one who grabbed my attention at the right time, an infection of infatuation burying itself in my soul through chance? Or was it something unobservable? Was I drawn to her because she was who she was? I was supposed to see her, to notice how she walks, what time she arrives, then leaves, how her hair is pinned or the shoes she likes to wear. The afternoon crowd arrives in their usual sequence. There are more office workers today, folders held tightly under their arms and laptop bags resting on their shoulders. A school couple walks into view and then runs out of it, screaming. Their peeping peers have spotted them in their serenity. Soon enough, she arrives. Today she’s back in the pearl trainers, and they seem even whiter than usual. Her hair’s pinned in a bun, loose strands flapping clumsily in the breeze. Without a thought, I tapped on the window. She looks up, missing my little rectangle. Then we find each other, and she smiles. Her eyes are blue and swarmed with life, like looking into a coral-filled reef. Hi, I mouth, she does the same, then as she always does, she vanishes.
If you’ve made it this far perhaps you’re willing to share a thought or two with me. What’s the most romantic scene you’ve ever seen (in real life)?
As always, if you enjoyed this post or some of my other work, please recommend this newsletter to a friend… or two. See you in the same place in a week.
Love, luke.
It is quite challenging to scavenge true life experiences in the middle of the overwhelming amount of fairy-tale like, romantic scenes, I have absorbed through a screen.
I love how you can bring sensorial experience through writing, which reminds me of how a romantic scene can be deprived of all of them, but the smell.
It keeps popping back in my mind, what I have experienced as a stranger had passed by. The woman, whose face I did not see had quickly vanished in the crowd behind me. But as seconds passed by, her scent started playing with my olfactive memory as it slowly brought to the surface, the memory of an intense, but short experience I had with someone. One that would create wounds of longing, and for a moment, I had it all back. An unbearable longing for someone that probably did not remember I existed. The textbook definition of platonic love, as the result of a sublimated passion.
The intensity was so overwhelming that it felt I had just lost the love of my life and that I would never get over it. But it all lasted a very short time and soon it was like it had never happened.